About Pat,\u201d he answered, and I saw
\nHarlan start and clench his teeth, \u201cthey found her at the bottom of that embankment near Merrick\u2019s corner this morning in her wrecked car\u2014dead ! Her mother called me about a half an hour before they found her. She asked if I knew where she had gone for the night. She said Pat had decided suddenly around eleven o\u2019clock last night that she had behaved foolishly about refusing to go to the party and had climbed into her roadster, chuckling over the surprise she would give us when she walked in time for the banquet. Her mother seemed to have a premonition of what would happen for she said it had been drizzling when Pat left and she had cautioned her against driving too fast on the slippery road. I\u2014I hadn\u2019t the heart to tell her we hadn\u2019t seen Pat. I was afraid, too, so I dressed and went out\u2014but they had discovered her body. Poor little Pat,\u201d he finished with a sigh.<\/p>\n
Harlan had slumped into a chair and sat staring into space. I motioned Bob to follow me into the studio, and without a word we took the thing of bones and replaced it in its corner. As we turned away, I noticed a strand of hair caught in the bony fingers of the left hand!
\n\u201cProbably Sally\u2019s\u2014last night,\u201d Bob said, \u201cShe was nearest, wasn\u2019t she?\u201d I didn\u2019t answer but I felt cold all over as I walked away.
\nI have never told anyone of the dream Harlan so vividly related to me that morning. I\u2019d merely be thought an impressionable fool if I did, I guess.
\nTo the rest of the world, Pat was just a member of the reckless younger generation, speeding in typical fashion on a slippery night road to join a party of waiting friends and ending disastrously at the bottom of a cliff. Too bad, but quite a natural denouement these days!
\nCall me superstitious if you will, but I can\u2019t think of the affair without having grave doubts as to its natural conclusion.
\nIf spirits do live on, in that vague place we call the Borderland, retaining their earthly personalities, then they must indeed retain their earthly emotions as well.
\nNovello had loved Pat. Can death change that? Since Pat continued to love his memory, was he not, as Harlan had said, still the lucky rival ?
\nBut he was a rival unable to defend his mortal memory from the blasphemous and unsportsmanlike treatment to which it had been subjected! Suppose this fact had taunted him into contemplating an interrupted victory\u2014into taking Pat across the misty frontier that had intercepted their love?
\nWho knows?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
About Pat,\u201d he answered, and I saw Harlan start and clench his teeth, \u201cthey found her at the bottom of that embankment near Merrick\u2019s corner this morning in her wrecked car\u2014dead ! Her mother called me about a half an hour before they found her. She asked if I knew where she had gone for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[80],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pulp-classics","tag-stephen-andrews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}